Gordian Knot
by UnholyWater
Summary: "Prompt: "(Ottoman) Turkey/Greece; asphyxia. Angry vicious power struggle. He doesn't want to kill the brat, just...remind him who the boss here is. Greece is not amused either way."


"You shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you."

It was the first time that Turkey talked since he had captured the boy. Greece had launched the assault for his Independence against him from Romania's divided house; poorly-prepared, terribly disorganized and all too weak. The only thing that Greece had had a sufficient amount of in battle was passion.

He had fought Turkey with tooth and nail, despite of getting his hopes for Russia's help crushed in the process, but he was ultimately overthrown in a disastrous defeat before he could even advance out of Romania's doorstep.

Such a pathetic sight, Turkey thought.

Where the battlefield used to be, Greece was lying down on his back with his wrists roped behind his back. His legs were suspended by having them locked into an elevated position, tied against a horizontal plank. His bare feet were twitching, bruised from the multiple hits of Turkey's _kurbash_ , the dreaded Ottoman whip made of the hide of a rhinoceros.

Greece was small, and felt even smaller as Turkey's foot covered up his whole chest. With each pressure from it, Greece gradually found himself struggling to draw any breath.

The rope around his neck made that task even more difficult. Its grip wasn't very tight but he knew that Turkey, who was holding the end of the thread, was fully intending to change that.

"I thought that you would have learned this rule by now, after the spankings I've given you whenever you've been a bad boy," Turkey simply stated, "but you still had to go and stab me in the back, while I was busy."

Greece couldn't see his expression behind that mask, but he could tell that Turkey wasn't amused. A sudden pull of the rope and its clutch on his neck halted any breath. Taken by surprise, he tried to gasp. Only to find out that he's not able to.

"I know you're too busy working in my chambers to know about what's happening in the rest of my home," he chided, "but you should at least be aware of the other short-lived uprisings that I have crushed," Turkey emphasized by squeezing further on the chest, his foot compressing Greece's lungs.

"They're all still trying to recover from the good beating I've given them. Oh right, Serbia is lucky that I don't want that nosy bastard Russia near my turf, so I was generous enough to give him a crib under my suzerainty... for now."

He grinned, and pulled the rope once more, tightening up the noose further around Greece's violated neck. "So tell me, why on earth would you think that you're going to be any different?"

Turkey decided to allow him to finally inhale a bit and stepped off Greece's chest. The firm noose allowed him to breathe only small amounts of oxygen, which he greedily heaved.

Killing the boy that he had been raising, had been nurturing for so long, wasn't in his intentions.

What he actually wanted was to teach the brat a thorough lesson, to make him for once and for all to never dare oppose him.

Dizziness clouding his eyes, knot clutching his throat and pain laboring his lungs, Greece gathered strength to regain some of his vitality.

"I see light," he managed to voice, "and it's coming from the West. Even behind your walls that block me from the outside world, I saw the spark that England, France and others have lit." Despite the afflictions, his expression softened. "It had strangely familiar warmth, maybe because it's partly fueled by my mother's fragments."

After voicing this, Greece frowned again and clenched his neck's muscles against the rope with all is might. "And, most of all, if other nations have now found reasons to rise up and to slay those who want them to be slaves," he hissed, "then I only deserve death if I choose to remain as your pet."

A sharp strike on his feet made him cry out, followed by a more vicious impact, scarring the soles further. Greece bit hard on his lips to keep himself from making a sound, while the blasting of Turkey's kurbash on his feet pierced in his ears.

The hits stopped, he lowered the whip and waited for Greece to open his eyes. Turkey was met with a glare fiercer than before and incoherent curses between panting, all limited by the knot on his throat. The Turk shook his head.

"So angry," he replied, as he leaned down, reaching for the boy. He caressed the bloodied face with a surprisingly soft stroke. "You really shouldn't be. I don't hate you, you know, or any of those that I've battled, conquered or held down." Greece blinked at that and turned his eyes curiously towards the masked man. Turkey nodded.

"There's no loathing from my part," he reassured. "The lion doesn't hate the prey it hunts. I didn't hate Russia whenever I clashed with him or Hungary when I brought her down to her knees or Bulgaria when I had to discipline him. Not even the Holy League that stopped my way. Win or lose, they all were my opponents. And you," Turkey emphasized in a soft tone, his voice consoling, "all I want from you, my most cherished one, is to live and to prosper under my wing.  
So stop seeing me as someone who wants to harm you, see me as your patron. Do so, and everything will be safe and sound for you. It's still not too late to understand that."

Turkey hadn't noticed the gradual effect that his soothing words, his fatherly voice had on Greece.

He realized it when he felt a pang of pain on his hand. He yelled and jerked the bitten arm back as he pulled himself upright in alarm.

"Sneaky little shit," Turkey snarled, clutching his now bleeding hand. Greece was bearing his teeth, with a glare more wrathful than any time before.  
While he had been caressing his face so tenderly, the boy had found that only as a chance to attack him. No wonder he likes cats so much, Turkey thought in spite; he and them are one of a kind.

He yanked the rope with no restrain this time. The knot mercilessly clenched around the neck, forcing Greece to let out gurgling sounds and being unable to mutter a word or gasp a single breath anymore.

"Really, what do you expect to accomplish on your own, kid? Have you forgotten that Egypt and Albania, who have actually learned their place, are ready to aid me whenever I command them to? After all, as you've already been informed, Austria, England and -your last resort- Russia consider your little rebellion troublesome and they want nothing to do with it. They only wish for their peace. Wise decision, that."

Greece had his mouth open by instinct despite it being useless for breathing, and his aching chest was raised off the floor in despair. A powerful stomp on it by Turkey, and it was crushed back on the ground, captured.

"Indeed, why would anyone waste their energy for you? You are but a pathetic relic of someone far greater than you. She's long dead and yet still glorious. But you are nothing like that, isn't that right, _rayah_?" The expected whimpering sound made Turkey smirk.

"You sure hate it when I call you that. Maybe because it's meaning is spot-on about what you are: an animal. Livestock to be pastured by its master."

Greece struggles were getting visibly weaker. He was under ultimate defeat and it seemed as if energy was completely draining off him. Noticing this, Turkey understood that even releasing him, the boy would now be incapable of doing anything against him no matter how much he'd long to.

He bowed to loosen the vicious comb only enough to keep the young one conscious. Deciding to have him remain this way, laying broken on the battle-torn soil of his defeat, legs humiliatingly lifted on the plank, Turkey turned his back and started taking his leave.

"This was my warning. Again. I hope that this time you'll be smart enough to be a good boy and heed it."

He moved away, to let Greece lay down on the field at this state for as long he'd see fit, before ordering for his release.

His pace halted at a mild cracking sound behind him. A louder one made him turn around. He saw Greece stabbing the bindings on his feet with a broken sword's shard again and again. Unknowingly to Turkey, he had been untying the rope on his wrists all along.

Sneaky. Typical, Turkey thought.

A last strike strong enough to break the wooden plank in two and injuring his own flesh, completely cut the ties off. Behind the mask, Turkey's eyes momentarily widened.

Greece's legs were freed; he grounded their bruised heels down and lifted his body straight up. With one hard move of the sharp steel in his bleeding hand, he slashed the noose off his neck. The cut rope fell and sprawled on the ground.

Turkey stood there, observing the feat before him with honest curiosity and amazement. For all his experience, he had seldom witnessed stubbornness so fevered from the weak. And this small one, nation acknowledged by none but himself alone, appeared determined to bring that to a whole new level.

Greece, looking and being past his limit of endurance, was standing up, commanding his legs to carry him, all his might to force himself awake.

"Listen to me Turkey and listen well," he spoke once he steadied his breath and found his voice again. "You have been honest and have given me your warnings. Now I'm returning the favor and I am giving you mine."

Turkey stared in an unpleasant wonder at the green eyes of his subservient. There was nothing noble there; no higher cause found, no virtuous dreams flickering.

They were clouded by raw malice.

"I am going to make you hate me." A callous, non-threatening voice. A cold statement of a fact. "You may indeed have never felt that way for anyone before, but I will make sure that you'll be given enough reasons to despise me, the animal as you like calling me. I'll plant in you hatred so deeply rooted that you won't let it go at any waking hour for the centuries to come."

He paused and smiled wryly at his next words. "Most likely I'm going to die, attempting to kick you, an Empire, out of my mother's ruined home. But I hardly care. Until then, though," he affirmed, "I will be only giving you pain to remember me by."

It felt as if once Greece would let the brimming wrath shatter it's cage, it would ruthlessly destroy everything before its path; and then no longer finding any more foes to wreck, he'd turn it against himself just to quench it.

Turkey for a moment found himself not liking this at all.

Heading Southwards, Greece began walking away, too weak to attack, yet right now too dangerous to be confronted. Under the crescent moon, he addressed his emperor one final time.

"I'm not your opponent, Τουρκία. I am your enemy."

Notes:

\- The first Greek uprising of 1821 took place in Wallahia (Romania). Despite it's complete annihilation, it sparked the massive and ultimately official outbreak of the War of Independence in Ottoman Greece.  
\- The French Revolution and the Enlightenment were major influences for the Greek rebellion.  
\- During the first years of the rebellion, unruly Greek revolutionaries committed massacres against the Turkish and Turk-allied populations living in Ottoman Greece.  
\- The title of _rayah_ (arabic for 'flock', 'cattle', 'subject') was used by the Ottoman Turks for the majority of the non-muslim groups of the Empire. Even today these groups consider the word a derogatory term.


End file.
